The Breakdown: Iran's Role in U.S.-Israeli Strategy
Tensions between Iran, Israel, and the United States have ignited a dangerous new chapter in a decades-long war. This violence follows years of political distrust, proxy warfare, and contested power dynamics rooted in the legacies of imperialism, nuclear ambition, and strategic alliances.
On June 13, Israel launched a series of attacks on Iran, targeting its nuclear and military structure. In return, Iran retaliated against Israel with missile and drone strikes. On June 21, The United States entered the war deploying bombs and missiles to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
These escalations followed months of diplomatic breakdowns, increased Israeli airstrikes across the region, and growing concerns over Iran’s uranium enrichment. The U.S. justified its involvement as a strategic deterrent, but critics argue it signaled a deeper alignment with Israeli military objectives.
This, along with continued strikes from Israel, caused widespread internet outages across Tehran. On June 23, Iran retaliated against the United States by launching missiles at U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. As of June 24, in Iran, 4,746 people have been injured and 610 have been killed. In Israel, 3,238 have been injured, and 28 people were killed.
Israel claims to have sent these strikes to prevent Iran from building an atomic weapon, despite U.S. intelligence agencies concluding that the nation is not actively building such a nuclear weapon. This is what international affairs scholars call a “security dilemma,” which occurs when one state’s efforts to increase its own security (e.g., building up its military) are perceived as a threat by other states.
The result is a cycle of escalation that neither side necessarily wants, but feels forced to pursue.
This dilemma is amplified by decades of mistrust: Israel views Iran’s regional influence, especially its ties to groups like Hezbollah, as an existential threat, while Iran sees both the U.S. and Israel as aggressors seeking to undermine its sovereignty.
Brief, Critical History: Iran, Israel, and the U.S.
1953 CIA-Backed Coup in Iran (Operation Ajax)
In August 1953, the CIA and MI6, U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies, orchestrated Operation Ajax, a covert coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and reinstated Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s authoritarian rule. Mossadegh had moved to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, which was previously controlled by the British owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP), a decision that threatened both British economic interests and Western geopolitical influence during the Cold War.
The U.S. and U.K. framed the operation as a necessary measure to prevent a communist takeover, through the real motive centered on regaining control of Iran’s vast oil reserves and protecting Western access to the region’s resources. Following the coup, Western oil companies, led by British and American firms, regained control of Iranian oil under a new consortium agreement.
The coup not only destabilized Iran’s progressive trajectory, but also cemented a legacy of anti-Western resentment among Iranians, particularly toward the United States and Britain. It remains a pivotal event in understanding Iran’s deep distrust of Western intervention and its lasting impact on the U.S.-Iran relations.
1979 Iranian Revolution
The 1979 Iranian Revolution marketed a deep change in Iran’s political, religious, and anti-imperialist trajectory. Sparked by widespread dissatisfaction with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s authoritarian rule, the revolution was led by a broad coalition of students, workers, clerics, and leftist groups. While Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ultimately emerged as the face of the movement, the early revolutionary base was notably diverse and ideologically varied.
Public resentment had reached a boiling point by the late 1970s. The Shah’s government, despite its economic modernization policies, violently repressed dissent through SAVAK, his secret police, who carried out torture, censorship, and widespread surveillance. Western media often portrayed the Shah as a “modernizing” force, but for many Iranians, he symbolized a corrupt elite ruling on behalf of foreign oil interests, especially British and American.
Mass protests erupted in 1978, with hundreds of thousands demanding the Shah’s removal and an end to foreign domination. What began as anti-regime marches quickly evolved into a call for self-determination and rejection of neocolonial interference. In January 1979, the Shah fled to Egypt. One month later, Khomeini returned from exile in France to assume leadership, ushering in the birth of the Islamic Republic.
The revolution was not simply a religious uprising as the West likes to depict it. It was a multi-class, multi-ideological uprising against imperialism, monarchy, and Western domination. While the post-revolutionary state imposed a strict theocratic order, many Iranians including secular nationalists, feminist, Marxists, etc. were later purged, imprisoned, or executed. These complexities are often omitted in Western accounts, which flatten the revolution into a binary clash between secularism and Islam.
The fall of the Shah sent shockwaves across the Middle East and permanently altered U.S. and Israeli foreign policy. Washington lost its strongest ally in the Persian Gulf, and Tel Aviv lost a covert partner. Iran, in turn, ceased all recognition of Israel and began to position itself as the ideological counterweight to both Western and Zionist regional influence.
The revolution reshaped regional politics by centering anti-colonial resistance and ushered in decades of sanctions, isolation, and proxy conflicts. For many in the Global South, it became a case study in both the possibilities and limits of resisting imperial powers.
Iran-Iraq War and the US Involvement
The Iran-Iraq War, lasting between 1980 and1988, was one of the longest wars of the 20th century, resulting in nearly a million deaths and completely altering the political landscape of the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region. Though often framed in Western narratives as a sectarian war between Shia-led Iran and Sunni-dominated Iraq, the roots of the war were deeply entangled in post-colonial state formation, Cold War power struggles, and the strategic manipulation of regional rivalries by global superpowers, particularly the United States.
The war began when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who was supported militarily by the United States and concerned about the revolutionary intensity sweeping from post-1979 Iran, launched an invasion of Iran on Sept. 22, 1980. He sought to seize the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway and prevent the export of Iran’s revolutionary ideology to Iraq’s Shia majority. Hussein gambled that Iran, which was still politically unstable and militarily weakened after its revolution, would fall quickly.
But Iran, empowered by nationalist and religious passion, mounted a fierce defense. What followed was an eight-year war marked by trench warfare, mass civilian casualties, the use of child soldiers, and widespread chemical weapons attacks.
The United States officially maintained a policy of neutrality, but in practice, it backed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime. In the name of “containing Iran,” the U.S. provided intelligence, economic support, and logistical aid to Iraq, despite being fully aware that Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and civilians. This assistance included satellite imagery to target Iranian positions and quiet diplomatic cover for Iraq at the United Nations.
The Reagan administration also played both sides. In what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair, senior U.S. officials secretly facilitated the sale of weapons to Iran in exchange for American hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon and used the proceeds to fund Nicaraguan right-wing paramilitaries, which violated both U.S. and international law.
U.S. involvement in the war also extended to naval confrontations. In 1988, the U.S. Navy shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 civilians aboard. Washington claimed it was an accident, but the tragedy remains a defining moment of U.S.-Iran hostility and is remembered in Iran as a symbol of Western impunity.
By 1988, both nations were economically exhausted and socially devastated. The war ended in a United Nations-brokered ceasefire, but its legacy lives on: widespread trauma, economic disrepair, and hardened mistrust toward the U.S. and its allies. The war demonstrated how imperial powers instrumentalized regional divisions to maintain control over energy resources and strategic waterways. The suffering of millions was subordinated to geopolitical chess moves by global powers, with the U.S. playing a pivotal role in prolonging and profiting from the violence.
U.S.-Israel Alliance
Since the 1960s, the United States and Israel have forged what has become one of the most enduring and controversial bilateral alliances in modern geopolitics. Though the two countries did not start as close allies –, U.S. support for Israel was initially cautious during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War –, their relationship intensified after Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, which shifted regional dynamics and bolstered U.S. confidence in Israel as a strategic partner against Arab states.
Over the decades, this alliance has grown into a pillar of U.S. Middle East policy. The U.S. has provided Israel with over $130 billion in military and economic aid, the most any country has received from the United States. Much of this aid is funneled through Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programs, which allow Israel to purchase U.S.-manufactured weapons, many of which are used in military operations in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria.
Beyond funding, the U.S. and Israel engage in deep intelligence sharing, joint military exercises, and collaborative missile defense programs, including the well-known Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems. In return, Israel acts as a forward base for U.S. regional operations, maintaining a qualitative military edge over all its neighbors, as guaranteed by U.S. law.
Diplomatically, the U.S. has used its veto power at the United Nations Security Council more than 40 times to block resolutions critical of Israel’s human rights abuses and illegal settlement expansion. The Trump administration further cemented this alliance by formally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, in defiance of international consensus, and the annexed Golan Heights as Israel territory in 2019, despite both areas being occupied under international law.
Legally, U.S. military actions in support of Israel – such as the most recent intervention in the Iran-Israel war – are often framed under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which allows for collective self-defense. However, one could argue that this interpretation is overly broad and masks a pattern of military interventions that serve strategic interests rather than defensive necessity. Scholars and international legal experts increasingly question the U.S. role as an “impartial” mediator in the region, pointing to its material support for Israeli occupation and blockade policies as complicity in systemic human rights violations.
The U.S.-Israel alliance reflects broader patterns of imperial entanglement: a settle-colonial state propped up by a global superpower to maintain regional dominance, protect energy corridors, and suppress anti-colonial resistance movements, particularly Palestinian and pan-Arab liberation efforts.
Iran’s Stance on Israel
Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran has rejected the legitimacy of Israel and positioned itself in direct opposition to Zionist occupation in Palestine. Unlike many Arab governments that have normalized relations with Israel under U.S. pressure or incentive (e.g. Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and Bahrain), Iran has maintained an unwavering stance based on ideological, religious, and geopolitical grounds.
The foundation of Iran’s position is rooted in its “axis of resistance” strategy, an informal network of state and non-state actors, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine, the Syrian government, and allied militias in Iraq and Yemen. Through this axis, Iran aims to challenge both Israel expansionism and American hegemony in West Asia, positioning itself as the lead of anti-imperial struggle in the region.
Iran provides financial, logistical, and military support to Hezbollah, which has fought several wars with Israel, most notably the 2006 Lebanon War. Iran also backs Palestinian armed groups in Gaza and has used its influence in Iraq and Syria to facilitate arms transfers, proxy operations, and political leverage. While critics in the West describe this as sponsoring terrorism, many across the Global South view Iran’s support as aligned with resistance to occupation and colonial violence.
This stance has made Iran a frequent target of Israeli intelligence operations. This includes assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, cyberattacks like Stuxnet, and frequent Israeli airstrikes on Iranian-linked targets in Syria. Israel has also lobbied aggressively against the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), which aimed to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. While U.S. intelligence agencies have consistently assessed that Iran is not currently pursuing a nuclear weapon, Israeli officials argue that Iran’s “latent capacity” poses an existential threat.
From Tehran’s perspective, Israel is seen as an outpost of U.S. imperialism and settler colonialism in a historically Arab and Muslim region. Iranian officials have often described Israel as a “cancerous tumor” in the region, language that is condemned in Western circles but reflective of deep-rooted historical grievances tied to the Nakba of 1948, the occupation of Palestinian territories, and continued displacement of indigenous Palestinians.
Iran’s hardline rhetoric reflects the broader Global South critique of Western hypocrisy, where colonial violence is legitimized by “security concerns” and resistance is criminalized as “terrorism.”
As this war deepens, the roots of hostility remain firmly embedded in a long history of intervention, occupation, and resistance. Understanding this history is essential not only to analyze the present crisis, but to imagine pathways out of it.
More Author-Picked Resources
BBC - CIA documents acknowledge its role in Iran’s 1953 coup
Zinn Education Project - Teach About Iran, Iraq, and the Escalating War
Book: Women and Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran by Sanam Vakil